#DailyDevotion Jesus Is Our God and Jesus Is One
Deut. 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates
The great Shema of Israel, that is Listen! The Lord calls Israel to attention. Pay attention you all down there! What shall we pay attention to? The Lord our God, the Lord is one. We might note that Jesus when asked what the greatest law was responded, Mar 12:29-30 “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (30) And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” So one, Yahweh is our God. There is no other God for Israel. No other gods will do. Two, Yahweh is one. There is no other god like him. He is not to be confused or mingled with other gods. And finally Yahweh is a unity.
Yahweh is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are not three gods but one God, on Yahweh. In the beginning we hear, “Let Us make man in our image and in Our likeness” We see here there is an Us and an Our. Yahweh is not talking to angels. Man is not made in the image and likeness of angels. He is talking within himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are not three but one. Yahweh talks speaks this way also about a husband and wife in Gen 2:24 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” As Yahweh is one so also husband and wife are one. Yahweh is Triune as the seraphim sing, Isa 6:3 “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
Now this Yahweh has revealed himself in Jesus. He became one of us, not the Father nor the Holy Spirit, but the Son, the Word of Yahweh, who spoke to and taught the Israelites. When he walked among them in our flesh (which he still has at the right of the Father) he taught us this great command and affirmed it, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The Israelites were commanded thus because he was their God but also as their God he had delivered them from the Israelites and made a covenant with them. No other god or gods had ever done such a thing.
Now Jesus Yahweh also commands all of us to look to no other gods but Him and in and through Him by the Holy Spirit, to the Father. For the Word, the Dabar Yahweh, has become incarnate and now as man has offered himself up as the sign of the covenant between God and man. He has become the scapegoat, he is the morning and evening sacrifice, the red heifer, the doves, the bulls and goat, the wave offering and the atoning sacrifice for us. Since this is so he calls us to devote ourselves wholly to him as he has devoted himself wholly to us.
O Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are one and command our undivided devotion to yourself as the one Yahweh, Lord who has saved us and called us to be your holy people. Grant unto us undivided hearts that you may have from us our whole devotion as you have been wholly devoted to us. In Jesus‘ name we pray. Amen.